With its February 24 deadline to the city to remove the Dolores Park pissoir or face legal action well passed, active anti-LGBTQ group Pacific Justice Institute has gone strangely quiet about what it once called "a human regression of mankind." Multiple SFist requests for comment to the Sacramento-based organized have gone unreturned, and the City Attorney's office refuses to say whether or not they ever received the threatened lawsuit. And so, the issue is behind us and we can all just get to peeing in peace — right? Wrong. The LA Times, it seems, just couldn't let it go, and today ran an article on the urinal detailing how the paper has "never seen anything quite like it."

The Times dedicates almost a thousand words to the plight of retired personal trainer Patrick Sullivan, whose prime address near Dolores Park forces him to gaze upon "the backs of dozens of men relieving themselves" in the open-air bathroom.

"My friend was listening to the news," Sullivan told the paper, "and she called me and said, 'You aren't going to believe this. It's not a statue. It's a urinal!' I was shocked."

Shocked!

Sullivan tells the Times that he supports the anti-gay group's efforts to have the urinal pulled, and has written to Supervisor Scott Wiener to make his position known. "The most upsetting thing is just seeing people urinate in the busiest corner of the park," Sullivan said, perhaps forgetting that urinals are intended to be urinated in. Also, had he not noticed the men urinating in plain view in the bushes all along the Muni tracks on sunny days for the last decade?

As for the LA Times, why they would choose to cover the pissoir at this late date is a bit of a mystery, but sometimes news travels slow. Perhaps they should just take a note from the obviously more cosmopolitan Ohioan they interviewed, Jim Caldwell, who was visiting San Francisco with his family on vacation.

"Well," he casually observed of the open-air urinal, "they do that in France."

Previously: Anti-Gay Group Threatens Lawsuit Over Outdoor Urinal At Dolores Park
Rec & Parks Explains The Plant Situation Around That Pissoir At Dolores Park
SF's First Open-Air Urinal Makes National Headlines
Photo Du Jour: First Look At Dolores Park's New Pissoir